If you are a parent of at least two children, you are already familiar with the question of whether to treat them differently or equally. When you want to reward one of your children with a toy car or doll, you wonder how this will affect the morale of the other child when he/she doesn’t get one. You worry about how to get your children to understand the concept of rewards, who deserves them and what they should do to gain these rewards.
Let’s realistically attempt to understand this with the picture instead of a thousand words. Did you laugh when you looked at the picture above? Why was it funny?
- The monkey has the ability to climb the tree, but what about all the other examinees?
- If the crow flies to the top of the tree faster than the monkey can climb it, would you say the crow reached the top without any effort and doesn’t deserve praise?
- Assuming that by some miracle the fish jumps out of its bowl, the pitiable creature would struggle to breathe and die in a couple of minutes once it’s out of the water, let alone run up to the tree trunk and climb it.
- The seal, the penguin and the terrestrial animals (the elephant and the dog) are in the same situation, though the degree of their ability (or rather, inability) is varied.
The article has been contributed by Butterfly Fields, a company working in the domain of innovative teaching-learning techniques. To know more about the work the company does, visit www.butterflyfields.com or call 040 2771 1020.